


windows to the fel soul

by alternatedoom



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Biting, Bitterness, Eye Gouging, Hatesex Averted, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-19 17:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10644207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatedoom/pseuds/alternatedoom
Summary: Rommath wants to be alone. Illidan wants information... and perhaps something else.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I reject William King's reality and substitute my own.

Rommath leaves the impromptu victory celebration before the others, mostly to get away from the newly resurrected Illidan Stormrage. The larger fight against the Legion still lies before them, and Rommath has no taste for any of that nonsense back-patting, nor the amazed whispers about Illidan's return. Rommath had stood only a yard away, but he could hardly bear to look at Stormrage, and he made his escape as quickly as possible. As he left he felt Liadrin's eyes on his back, but he didn't care. Liadrin knows him well enough to tell when he wants to be left alone.

The Nightspire has many rooms. Rommath wanders far and finds a small side chamber with all the bodies piled in one corner. Solicitously, whomever stacked the corpses froze them to prevent the stink of their death throes and their newly creeping decay from filling the entire tower. The chamber is an atrium with an open roof, exposing the sky, but no one's likely to trouble him in here.

Rommath shuts the double doors behind him, casts a ward to lock them closed, and slumps down exhausted on the softness of Elisande's immaculate, enchanted carpets ten feet from the silent dead. Leaning his aching back gratefully against the cushioned wall, Rommath at least partially relaxes. His whole body aches from a day of careening at full tilt through the Nighthold, watching his back, fighting for his life. He's too old for this much action. His stomach grumbles, but he ignores his hunger a bit longer. When he finds the motivation and energy to lift his arms and refocus his mind, he'll conjure a cup of hot soup.

He zones out at first, his mind drifting, but as he rests Rommath finds himself eventually looking at the corpses, cataloging. Their fine clothing gives them away as nobles or courtesans who had weapons thrust into their hands, not guards or soldiers, and their frozen expressions tell of the agony and fear of death. Rommath has seen faces stricken like theirs many, many times before, yet somehow he's never grown used to the sight.

The doors burst open, crashing inward, his flickering ward short-circuiting, extinguished at the source. The broken ward causes him a start of pain, like a static shock in his chest as his magic is crushed. Rommath stares stunned as Illidan Stormrage steps into the chamber.

"Does death make you forget how to knock?" he bites off, as astonished as he is antagonized.

Illidan takes his time looking around the room, then answers Rommath's question with a question in his indelible, whispery growl. Typical. "Would you have answered?"

"No," Rommath says, blunt and truthful, rising with some effort from the plush carpeting. Illidan may be on their side, but he is an enemy, and Rommath will always meet enemies on his feet. "What do you want?"

"I remember you, Rommath," Illidan says, staring at him now, his voice a jungle cat's rumble in the quiet of this wing of the hold.

"I haven't forgotten you either." Rommath's lip curls in a snarl. "What do you _want_?"

"I wish to see your master," Illidan says. "Where is he?"

Rommath lacks the words to answer this question, so he levels a frigid glare at Illidan, his eyes icy enough to extinguish a palanquin fire.

Illidan's face changes. "Kael is dead, then?"

"Insightful as ever," Rommath mocks him.

Illidan drops into a crouch and his dark head lowers a few inches in what might be grief, but Rommath feels not a shred of empathy for this corrupted creature who led his prince so merrily down the road to his gruesome fate. "I had hoped tales of his duplicity were untrue," Illidan says.

"Get out," Rommath tells him coldly.

"Tell me the circumstances."

"I'm not your servant," Rommath says, staring murder at him, an expression that would make any magister run. "You can go ask someone else. Now get out before I throw you out." But the part that's a threat issues from his mouth flatly, hollow like he's too stricken to mean it. After all these years, it shouldn't affect him so to see Illidan again, or to simply hear Kael's name...

Illidan moves fast. Rommath has seen the dizzying speed with which the demon hunters fight, but Illidan's upon him much faster than Rommath would have thought such a hulking wall of muscle could move, and as if that weren't enough, his power is vast. Illidan brushes in the blink of an eye past Rommath's magical defenses and into his personal space, grabbing him about the upper arm and the neck before Rommath can so much as breathe. His posture, the sudden grab, the way he pins Rommath all scream killing rage, but Illidan tilts Rommath's chin up as gently as a lover. "You would blame me?"

Illidan has a good two feet on him, not counting the horns, but his incubus goat's legs are bent deeply, bringing his face down close to Rommath's, looming mere inches apart. Illidan's gaze through the blindfold commands attention, and something winds around them, a beast with two mouths whispering of fire and rage, heat and violence and mutual doom, and for a second Rommath fantasizes that it's Kael's restless ghost between them, because this physical altercation with Illidan is the closest he's been to Kael in a decade, and probably the closest he'll ever be again. Their bodies stand still together without so much as a quiver, even as Rommath has the sense he's grappling for his very life, even as his heart thumps and he knows the situation has spiraled out of control.

But the red sense of danger doesn't diminish his hate or his sharp tongue; Rommath may have been accosted, but he will not be intimidated. 

"Who else?" Rommath snaps, and he adds bitterly, "Who else but Kael himself? You led us into your war and set him right on Kil'jaeden's doorstep."

"Your prince was weak in the end," Illidan says, as if that is a fact, as if he knows the first thing about it, and Rommath has his arcanite dagger conjured to his hand in a heartbeat. The leather-bound hilt slides in his sweaty grip as he drives it low towards Illidan's gut, a strike to wound but not to kill. Rommath's not an idiot, and he didn't go to all the trouble of helping to bring Stormrage back just to kill him again. Not that he even expects to land the blow. The blade's an inch away from flesh when Illidan casually catches his hand, nonchalant as though he knew the strike was coming and could have stopped the attack even before it began.

"You broke your solemn vow to him. To help our people. Or you just lied," Rommath hisses through gritted teeth. Illidan squeezes his arthritic fingers until he's forced to drop the dagger with a gasp.

"I gave him the Vial of Eternity," Illidan says. "He was betraying me."

"If there were any justice in this world, he would be here and you'd be a lost whisper in the Nether," Rommath seethes as the metal clatters around on the floor. Illidan doesn't even bother to kick the blade away. 

"I never wished him ill," Illidan insists, but Rommath talks over him.

"I would kill you all over again if Khadgar and that naaru didn't claim we need you." The frail old part of Rommath that tenaciously clings to the life-instinct is terrified precisely because Rommath feels fearless. He has little enough left to lose, and so through clenched teeth he speaks his heart. If anyone's earned the tiresome displeasure of hearing how he truly feels, it's Illidan. "If you had eyes I would scratch them out."

Illidan looks at him, long and calm and considering. "Go ahead."

For a second Rommath doesn't understand, but in a single smooth motion Illidan reaches behind his head and unknots the blindfold. The black strip flutters in his huge clawed hand like the wide silken ribbon of a gift, revealing the twin blazes of felfire the blindfold never kept concealed anyway, and this encouragement to therapeutic touch is possibly the strangest invitation Rommath has received in a long, long life. 

Yet it feels right somehow for Rommath to press his thumbs into the places Illidan's eyes should be.

Halfway to the first knuckle, Rommath gets a surprise when the twin green fires that should be insubstantial as flame instead feel thick as dense moss, offering resistance as he pushes, and his skin burns like his thumbs have been dipped in a moderate acid. Illidan's monstrous lined face twists into a smile at whatever he sees on Rommath's face, and Rommath sinks harder and farther in, emphatically burying his thumbs to the swollen joints and digging deeper still, until he feels his thumbnails graze the back of Illidan's eye sockets and the base of his own hands prevent jabbing any farther. Instinctively his fingers close around the sides of Illidan's face, a perfect setup if Rommath were going to jerk Illidan's head down and knee him in the face. As if he could.

"Feel better?" Illidan says, a little sardonic, goading him.

Rommath draws one aching hand back and slaps Illidan without much thought. With Illidan's body bent Rommath doesn't have to far extend his arm to reach Illidan's cheek, but Illidan might as well be a statue carved of stone for all that the force of Rommath's blow moves him. Rommath's thumb is slimy with whatever passes for a demon hunter's inner eye fluid, yet simultaneously smoldering with fel embers caught in the wrinkles of the cuticles and the folds at the thumb-joint. Rommath notices the green cinders and the grotesque coating almost absently, mostly because he realizes that with the slap he's transferred a small streak of the ocular dew onto Illidan's face. The smear of muck on Illidan's cheek is the palest glowing green, like fel-infused mucus. Rommath scarcely feels the pain from the burns on his thumbs.

But Rommath does not feel better, and with a word of power he hits Illidan again, a writhing orange ball of superheated fire in his cupped hand this time.

Illidan hardly registers the attack. He absorbs the blow with a slight shift of his head, the flames fizzling and dissipating into nothing, and clearly Rommath's plan of blasting him out betwixt the still-open doors is out of the question.

"What do you want?" Rommath demands again. He's still thumb-deep in Illidan on one side, so Rommath shakes his arm a little, enough for Illidan to feel even if the vibration fails to rattle his hideous demon's teeth. Rommath has no intention of withdrawing fully, because it feels like a degree of power, an iota of control over the situation even if the penetration of his eye sockets is an insouciant nothing to Illidan. Returns from the grave, obliterates Gul'dan, invites an old acquaintance to manually violate his skull, perhaps it's all just another Tuesday for Illidan Stormrage.

"I want you to be at peace," Illidan says, and his voice is devoid of the sarcasm of a moment before. "I am sorry for your loss," he adds, voice husky, and he leans in and kisses Rommath, a wet and intimate kiss but dull and lifeless as kissing a dead thing.

Rommath is shocked enough to jerk his remaining thumb out. Illidan tastes of fel and musk, of power warped, and the twin scents of his breath and sweat are masculine and more arousing than they should be considering Rommath hates Illidan, hates how powerful he is, hates the things he's done, hates the things he allowed to happen. Rommath hates what Illidan stands for, hates that he's become a symbol, hates that the Legionfall leadership has decided they need him for some Lightforsaken reason, and hates that Illidan's back from the dead and is apparently only now choosing to haunt him, to hunt him through the Nighthold like prey. The air flowing throughout Suramar City is heavy with perfumed flowers and fragrant sandalwood incense, not to mention the mountains of fresh corpses, but all Rommath can smell is Illidan. Illidan's gaze is mesmeric, drawing the eye with a sense of inevitability, and as Rommath's heart pounds he finds he can't look away. The expression Illidan levels at him is evaluating, speculative even, his generous lips pursed thoughtfully.

When Illidan shifts the pad of a thumb up over the corner of Rommath's lips, Rommath registers the dryness of his mouth a second before he turns his head an inch and viciously bites down. He could attempt another, stronger spell, but his fire magic was like so much hot air for Illidan to dismiss, and his dagger was mercilessly crushed from his hand, so Rommath delivers the last and most appropriately personal attack available to him: a nasty bite, made at an awkward angle because of Illidan's long claws, to see if he can do anything, anything at all to make Illidan feel a fraction of what he feels, to see if he can get that message through. _Monster. Go away._

Sin'dorei teeth are sharper than they look, and Rommath bites down until he hears and feels the crunch, and his teeth rebound painfully on bone. Fel-tainted blood floods his mouth and Rommath stops, turning his head to spit on the floor: not a wise idea for him to swallow even a small amount of such a substance. As he empties his mouth he has the sense he's only managed to further sully his robes, but no matter. When Rommath looks up again, he's nearly panting from lack of breath, and the rancid taste lingers on his tongue, but Illidan's forehead is deeply creased and his beast's needle-teeth are bared. Illidan's felflame eyes look no different than before Rommath mashed his way into whatever foul cross of demonic and organic matter accumulates within them. Why had he done that? _His gaze is hypnotic_ is no reason at all.

Still breathing hard, Rommath's eyes flicker down to Illidan's thumb, where he sees the ringed teeth marks. Black blood wells within the indentations, and as Rommath watches, Illidan brings his injured thumb to his mouth, swiping the blood off with one long pass of his tongue before he drops his arm. Illidan's lips are parted and he looks half hungry, the pitted skin of his face twisted almost into a leer. Rommath's stomach turns. Is this the sort of thing Kael and Illidan did together... ?

The intent way Illidan's looking at him causes the sense of a physical struggle to fall away, making the proximity of their bodies deadly unnatural. Anyone passing the doorway and seeing them twined around each other like this would think the wrong thing. Rommath flushes at the thought and shoves Illidan away, and as if he would have done so at any time, Illidan allows Rommath to push him a few inches back.

Illidan suddenly touches the thin smear of phlegm on his violet cheek and looks down, his eyeless gaze lingering in the vicinity of Rommath's hands for longer than Rommath would have expected, giving Rommath the surprise impression that Illidan didn't intend harm to him.

The few seconds having Illidan's compelling gaze off his face allows Rommath to pull himself together. Rommath does not waste those moments. If it's to be a contest of wills, Illidan is way out of his depth. Illidan may have spent ten thousand years clinging to sanity in the dark, but Rommath manages Silvermoon's mages for a living.

Rommath narrows his eyes, shelving his outward hostility and schooling his face into mild disdain. "Are you going, or shall I?" The short, slightly bored sentence comes out well, brooking no room for argument and leaving no room for interpretation. The possibility that Illidan might not let him go is stridently ignored. Rommath may be outclassed in sheer strength and even in magic, and Illidan might have some disturbing charisma to him, but no one's better than Rommath at putting insolent, lumbering clods in their place. 

Lifting his gaze, Illidan takes him in for a moment, then gives Rommath a bow that somehow involves zero bending, a sarcastic spreading of his clawed hands and slight movement of his shoulders, and he crouches and springs with a flying leap up out of the atrium's open ceiling, blindfold still dangling between his talons.

Dramatic to the end, Rommath thinks resentfully, looking after him, and dramatic in the new beginning he doesn't deserve.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Healing the Sullied](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11002443) by [shinyforce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyforce/pseuds/shinyforce)




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